No, you cannot leave your moose here Now, go away
by chickenscrews
Summary: Terra, Aqua, and Ven enjoy a relaxing winter getaway at a remote log cabin. Then, the moose appeared…


No, you cannot leave your moose here. Now, go away.

Ven put down his comic book and said to his friends with wide-eyed revelation, "Guys! Pants are only a socially-constructed paradigm of southward limb repression designed by sartorial companies to steal additional revenue from the gullible bourgeoisie in our mentally-suppressive capitalist society!"

Terra and Aqua looked at their young friend sitting between them on the couch in silent but transparent alarm, caught completely off-guard by the lad's random political epiphany. The two grownups exchanged confused glances at each other, then at Ven, who only stared profoundly into space, perhaps no longer aware of the crackling fireplace on the other side of the small room.

"Ven, what kind of comic are you reading?" Terra asked with visible worry, placing down his own book—a collection of short stories by Herman Melville—to afford a better view of the colorful material his friend held open before him. Somehow, Terra doubted that a fast-food restaurant's comic book about a super-powered cow capable of traveling faster than sound could have prompted this sort of social commentary which Ven now subscribed to.

Aqua was slow to speak, still hardly processing what she just heard. "Uh…I don't…wear pants, Ven, so am I part of this…capitalist conspiracy?"

Ven didn't answer, but only continued to stare wide-eyed into a distant nothing in particular.

"Ven!" Terra tried to reawake him as he snapped his fingers repeatedly in front of the boy. "I need you to come back to reality, bro. You're freaking me out here."

But to Ven, there was only the void. There was only pantsless epiphany and the desolate void of merciless truth.

Aqua set down her copy of Henry David Thoreau's _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_ and felt Ven's forehead. "There's no fever…should we take him to a hospital?"

Just then, a moose was flung through their cabin's window and it crashed against the chimney, demolishing it on impact and burying the fireplace in a mound of bricks and moosey rubble. The two older Keybearers screamed in renewed alarm and a humanoid eggplant ascended from the ribcage of the deceased moose with a holy light emanating from his aubergine form.

The divine eggplant spoke: "Ventus, my dear boy, I'm proud of you for reaching this conclusion all on your own. But this is only the first step in your journey towards _true_ enlightenment. Come with me and I shall teach you all the other wonderful secrets of the universe you've yet to learn."

Terra pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. "Aw, jeez. Not this again."

Aqua threw her head in her hands and moaned. "Lightness, can we _please_ go on _one vacation_ where Ven doesn't suddenly invoke the spirit of a crazed philosophic god?"

Ven only remained in his vegetative state and began to drool.

The eggplant now played an accordion as he swayed from side to side and prepared to sing.

Terra got up from the couch and left his book on the coffee table. "The hell with this. I'm getting the broom." Then he left the room to do just that.

The eggplant sang to his accordion's melody:

ㇸ6 _When all that you know is covered in pants,_

ㇸ6 _When all the gams in your life face needless supplants,_

ㇸ6 _Vennie, my ward, you mustn't be bored,_

ㇸ6 _For this is your most marvelous chance!_

ㇸ6 _You…_

ㇸ6 _Must…_

Terra repeatedly struck the eggplant in the back of his head with the broom.

"Out! Get!" Terra prompted, and the eggplant hissed back, but was then thwacked in the face by the knoll of straw bristles and ran out the door and into the snow.

The eggplant cursed in a hellish voice as flames sprung from the earth at his accordion's behest, **_"You haven't seen the last of me, broom-wielder! I'll see you in Hell yet!"_**

And then he ran for the hills.

Aqua sighed. "Glad that's over. What is that, the seventh philosophic deity you've chased off since we started these vacations?"

Terra bolted the door shut and regarded the shattered window, its trail of broken glass, and the lifeless moose sprawled over their collapsed chimney, "We're going to pretend this never happened. Pack your bags, pack your Ven, because we're leaving before any more of these patron saints of random economic trivia find us."

Ven snapped back to reality. "Eh? What's going on—? **_Why is there a moose in our chimney?!_**"


End file.
